it’s the type of rainfall that gives nature an emotion that we don’t always get to see, if that makes sense. It won’t let us wallow in its presence simply because it is present, like we usually do. It is fed up with us always making it the scapegoat to our crummy days. So Rainfall festers for a week while we continually groan at the clouds, hug ourselves closer from the chill in the air and joke about forgetting what the sun looks like.

It’s kind of like when you walk around morosely for a few days because something is wrong but you’re not sure exactly what it is and why it’s causing the anxious ball in your throat and tears that gently tap at on the back of your eyelids, threatening to burst their way through and well up in the corners of your eyes and the crevices beneath them. And some days you let them fall quietly, thinking that you’ll feel better after you do. But, you don’t. So you go about your daily routine, trying to mask the gloom that you seem to be perpetually feeling by letting the sun break through the clouds every once in awhile when your mind is away from your troubles. It’s almost like you’re back to normal!

But not quite. Because eventually, you get alarmingly tired when you begin to notice how much energy it takes to keep composure. You can feel the ball of restlessness in your throat wanting to shout its way out and the tears are sneaking through the cracks in that stony resolution that has hardened in your gaze from the preceding days of staring contests where you’ve repeated the dishonest mantra of “I’m fine I’m fine I’m fine—” the brick and mortar recipe to what you thought would make a crack-less dam to contain your feelings.

and then you cry. But you know, really cry. That type of cry that’s so cathartic that you can’t feel yourself shaking and you don’t care who is watching and who is listening, or even that someone is finally listening. You just cry and yell and crack the sky with your pain. Over and over. You break things around you. And when the tears flow and the snot runs down your face, they’re taking with them all the unnecessary detritus that was crusted around your eyes and in your nose and from your mind and you feel lighter— you can breathe.

And then the tears have become a drizzle and the slow sobbing thunder gets softer until everything is jarringly calm and silent.

The leaves drip, the puddles go still, and the sky is pink with the setting sun as the blissful, dreamless sleep waits on the horizon with open arms.

We are watching from our windows, stunned. Perhaps a bit sheepish at the backlash that perhaps resulted from all our bitching. And that relieved, peaceful smile of closure as the Universe sort of falls back into place.

It’s kind of like that.